New York Magazine is conducting a review of past pieces by one of its writers following recent accusations of plagiarism.
Columnist Ross Barkan faces allegations of copying content from other journalists in at least three of his recent articles for the magazine. This includes a report from the Washington Post last week about Ben Shapiro and questions surrounding his conservative media organization.
Barkan, who has firmly rejected the plagiarism accusations, became the center of attention on social media when Washington Post journalist Drew Harwell shared screenshots highlighting nearly identical paragraphs in both publications’ stories.
In response, New York Magazine quickly amended the opening paragraph of Barkan’s article to properly acknowledge the Washington Post reporter and added an editor’s note at the article’s conclusion.
“This story has been updated to credit reporting from the Washington Post,” the editor’s note stated.
Amid these developments, an NPR reporter claimed to have found two additional instances of Barkan allegedly copying from other sources, namely the Intercept and Compact Magazine, after analyzing his previous works using an AI tool.
The controversy has spurred the magazine to examine Barkan’s past work, a rep confirmed.
“We are conducting a review of the writer’s prior work,” a spokesperson for the mag, Lauren Starke, told The Post.
Barkan, for his part, lashed out on X over the saga — denying he ever blatantly stole other writers’ work, insisting he “properly hyperlinked and cited” where necessary.
“Between Crain’s and New York Magazine in the last calendar year, I have published something like 150 columns. A story is currently being written about *3.* One was updated with proper citation, and the other two had proper citations already,” he said.
“‘Multiple’ is barely any out of *hundreds* and most are incredibly weak examples. This is the definition of a non-story. I am proud of my record, and it speaks for itself. I’ll put it up against anyone’s in this industry, including your own,” he added in a follow up post.
